The present disclosure relates to an illumination device suitable for a planar light source, and a display unit including the illumination device.
In recent years, along with reduction in thickness of a television monitor, a display unit including a combination of a liquid crystal panel and an illumination device (a backlight unit) has become a mainstream. Further, in addition to the thickness reduction, the display unit includes an edge light emitting diode (LED) type illumination device in which the number of LEDs occupying a large proportion of material cost is reduced.
In the edge LED type illumination device, LED light sources are arranged in one end of the illumination device, and a light guide plate is disposed over an entire region desired to emit light. Therefore, even if the LEDs are arranged only on the one end of the illumination device, the entire screen is allowed to be brightened. In addition, displacing an optical sheet between the light guide plate and the liquid crystal panel causes uniform light emission over the entire surface.
For example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2006-324407, as an example of the LED light source, surroundings of a blue LED element is filled with a sealing resin, and the sealing resin contains a yellow fluorescent substance and a green fluorescent substance in a dispersed state to expand color gamut as compared with the color gamut of white obtained based on complementary color relation between blue and yellow.